How Do You Get Over Death?

[Celestine]

This question is obviously directed towards my fellow atheists, hence why it is in the Atheism Sub Forum.

Anyway, how did you get over the thought of dying? After the huge support structure called "Religion" was taken away from your life, how did you get over the thought of everything you have ever done having no effect on the Universe as a whole. Or everything ever done by anyone is going to be completely destroyed by the inevitable heat death of the Universe.

Personally I feel that, because of all of our fates, it makes life even more precious. This took me a while to understand, but hopefully most of you do.

I wanted to know if our reasons matched up or differed.

Thanks!

Making a lot of assumptions there, one you assume I believe in the big bang or the big crunch, I don't. 

Death is nothing to be afraid of, once you are dead there will be no more suffering, no more anxiety just peace. Now this might tempt some people into committing suicide, it is my belief that you can not escape life. I believe strongly that we collectively will experience existence again and again in some form or another for all eternity, an eternity of the joys of living as well as an eternity of suffering that comes with being alive. I view it as rather depressing and would prefer to being dead forever which in a sense I suppose I will be, in the sense that i will never again be who I am now. My greatest concern with my own belief is that by this logic I will exist one day as  a female which I guess kind of works out if I come across as something like a praying mantis.

You bet, no one can ever know exactly what happens after death due to lack of testimony. As far as science can tell, nothing happens. If consciousness is just an emergent property of an active brain, then that will cease.

Some people will always cling to the hope that the consciousness will somehow survive. We don't know, maybe it's possible.

I am beginning to ponder if consciousness is a universal material by which all things happen, and that our brains are simply using it in the way that a light bulb uses electricity, I wonder what would happen if you would remove the part of the brain that defines us as individuals. You may ask what happens to you after you die, but have you ever asked how you came to be in this world in the first place? Many would say that since we have brains we are aware of ourselves, so in there must lay a clue to the answer, but does consciousness limit itself to our brain? If it is a universal material then it would not, and rather than a cosmic consciousness being a higher level of consciousness I would call it the base level. It should be noted I really don't like using the term consciousness because it means the state of being aware, and I would much rather there be a name for this hypothetical substance. If there is one already then I do not know of it.